36 ms·

Anyone have experience with Flot?

zackattack 17y ago
Yeah, I use it for plotting follower data for CustomerFind. The chart on the homepage (http://www.customerfind.com http://www.customerfind.com) is a screenshot of part of a user's controlpanel, and was rendered using flot. It was very easy to get flot set up, it plays nicely with the rest of my js, including jQuery. Flot is fast. P.S. CustomerFind v2 is no longer focusing on AutoFollow, though the copy on the homepage reflects otherwise [http://customerfind.posterous.com/do-you-sell-a-product-or-service-online-start http://customerfind.posterous.com/do-you-sell-a-product-or-s...]
Maciek416 17y ago
Yes, we use Flot to visualize some pretty beefy data with many data points. Flot has some very nice features and is a reasonably active project. The big problem I see with a project like Highcharts (and other Flot alternatives I've tried) is that features like animation and pretty aesthetics are center stage while performance is typically hugely lacking. We've driven Flot to its limit, and by far I can say that the winner of JS charting APIs is going to be the library that can perform well not just on Chrome but on Internet Explorer too. We've charted things here that take under 1 second to render in Firefox/Chrome/Safari while taking 10-15 minutes with the CPU pegged (yes, you read that correctly) in IE. We've gotten around it with a bit of work, but it's still a glaring problem for the APIs, and a glaring problem for projects that use HTML5 canvas, can't use excanvas.js with the Silverlight patch, but do need to serve up JS-powered charts to clients still on IE6/IE7.
- bd 17y ago
  Raphaël is pretty fast even on Explorer: http://raphaeljs.com/ http://raphaeljs.com/
  - rbanffy 17y ago
    Thanks. MIT trumps proprietary any day.
  - henriklied 17y ago
    You also have the gRaphaël library, Raphaël specifically for charts: http://g.raphaeljs.com/ http://g.raphaeljs.com/
    - deleted 17y ago
      [deleted]
- benmathes 17y ago
  This terrible slowness in IE with flot is because IE doesn't support the <canvas> tag, so it has to be simulated in javascript. In Firefox and Chrome Flot uses the <canvas> tag, and therefore native browser code, to do the drawing.
  - gruseom 17y ago
    That's precisely why the only acceptable way to do this is with VML on the IE side. VML is surprisingly good for something so old. It's essentially SVG avant la lettre. Its main problem is that it's very poorly documented.
    - donalm 17y ago
      Flot requires excanvas.js to simulate the canvas in IE. Internally excanvas.js uses VML.
      - gruseom 17y ago
        I said that an acceptable solution would have to use VML, not that a VML solution would have to be acceptable. The Canvas API is completely dissimilar to VML, so it's not surprising that excanvas et. al. have proven to be notoriously slow. It's not clear to me why anyone would even bother, except as a way to bolt IE support on as an afterthought. Like it or not, anything that does that is going to be commercially marginal. As I mentioned, VML is remarkably close to SVG. So there's an obvious solution here.
forsaken 17y ago
I was looking through graphing libraries over the past weekend and settled on flot. It is really nice and fast, and works well. You can see an example here, which took about an hour to build: http://kong.ericholscher.com/tests/test-frontpage/personal-site/ http://kong.ericholscher.com/tests/test-frontpage/personal-s...
jashkenas 17y ago
We use it for graphing work queue size in CloudCrowd. Here's a screenshot of it in action: http://wiki.github.com/documentcloud/cloud-crowd/getting-started http://wiki.github.com/documentcloud/cloud-crowd/getting-sta...
deleted 17y ago
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iamwil 17y ago
Flot is pretty good, but only does time series data, as I recall.

Yeah, I use it for plotting follower data for CustomerFind. The chart on the homepage (http://www.customerfind.com http://www.customerfind.com) is a screenshot of part of a user's controlpanel, and was rendered using flot. It was very easy to get flot set up, it plays nicely with the rest of my js, including jQuery. Flot is fast. P.S. CustomerFind v2 is no longer focusing on AutoFollow, though the copy on the homepage reflects otherwise [http://customerfind.posterous.com/do-you-sell-a-product-or-service-online-start http://customerfind.posterous.com/do-you-sell-a-product-or-s...]

Maciek416 17y ago

Yes, we use Flot to visualize some pretty beefy data with many data points. Flot has some very nice features and is a reasonably active project. The big problem I see with a project like Highcharts (and other Flot alternatives I've tried) is that features like animation and pretty aesthetics are center stage while performance is typically hugely lacking. We've driven Flot to its limit, and by far I can say that the winner of JS charting APIs is going to be the library that can perform well not just on Chrome but on Internet Explorer too. We've charted things here that take under 1 second to render in Firefox/Chrome/Safari while taking 10-15 minutes with the CPU pegged (yes, you read that correctly) in IE. We've gotten around it with a bit of work, but it's still a glaring problem for the APIs, and a glaring problem for projects that use HTML5 canvas, can't use excanvas.js with the Silverlight patch, but do need to serve up JS-powered charts to clients still on IE6/IE7.

bd 17y ago
Raphaël is pretty fast even on Explorer: http://raphaeljs.com/ http://raphaeljs.com/
- rbanffy 17y ago
  Thanks. MIT trumps proprietary any day.
- henriklied 17y ago
  You also have the gRaphaël library, Raphaël specifically for charts: http://g.raphaeljs.com/ http://g.raphaeljs.com/
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]
benmathes 17y ago
This terrible slowness in IE with flot is because IE doesn't support the <canvas> tag, so it has to be simulated in javascript. In Firefox and Chrome Flot uses the <canvas> tag, and therefore native browser code, to do the drawing.
- gruseom 17y ago
  That's precisely why the only acceptable way to do this is with VML on the IE side. VML is surprisingly good for something so old. It's essentially SVG avant la lettre. Its main problem is that it's very poorly documented.
  - donalm 17y ago
    Flot requires excanvas.js to simulate the canvas in IE. Internally excanvas.js uses VML.
    - gruseom 17y ago
      I said that an acceptable solution would have to use VML, not that a VML solution would have to be acceptable. The Canvas API is completely dissimilar to VML, so it's not surprising that excanvas et. al. have proven to be notoriously slow. It's not clear to me why anyone would even bother, except as a way to bolt IE support on as an afterthought. Like it or not, anything that does that is going to be commercially marginal. As I mentioned, VML is remarkably close to SVG. So there's an obvious solution here.

forsaken 17y ago

I was looking through graphing libraries over the past weekend and settled on flot. It is really nice and fast, and works well. You can see an example here, which took about an hour to build: http://kong.ericholscher.com/tests/test-frontpage/personal-site/ http://kong.ericholscher.com/tests/test-frontpage/personal-s...

jashkenas 17y ago

We use it for graphing work queue size in CloudCrowd. Here's a screenshot of it in action: http://wiki.github.com/documentcloud/cloud-crowd/getting-started http://wiki.github.com/documentcloud/cloud-crowd/getting-sta...

deleted 17y ago

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iamwil 17y ago

Flot is pretty good, but only does time series data, as I recall.